Check out Girl Genius

This may be old news for some people, but I've been riveted to Girl Genius, by Phil Foglio, for the past couple days. I haven't quite read it all, yet, but I will. Soon.

Start with Girl Genius 101 and move on to the Advanced Class. It's very entertaining.

Faithful reinterpretation of NiN's "Hurt"

This is not what you think it is. The song is one of my favorites, particularly the Johnny Cash version done a few years ago.

The website sadkermit.com also has high-quality MP3s of this (and other) songs. The rendition of Radiohead's "Creep" is quite funny, especially when Kermit says "fucking". I don't know ... it's just so ... funny.

Spring 2.0 is out!

Woohoo! Now we have a new, enhanced version of the Spring Framework. Of course, if this doesn't mean anything to you, then it doesn't mean anything to you. However ...

For those unfortunates among us that care about enterprise Java development (I count myself among them), this new release has some very interesting new enhancements (that I won't review here). I suppose I'll have to buy a new/updated book on Spring, now. Perhaps not just yet, as the paint ain't quite yet dry.

Methinks there comes a point where a "lightweight" framework ceases being light. Are we there, yet?

At last a new house design posted to my website

Just in case anyone is interested, I just posted a new house design, Northwest #1, to my website. This design had been on the Works In Progress page since last summer, mainly awaiting inspiration to finish out the master bath and complete the renderings. The Works In Progress is also updated with a new in progress design (Suburban Tradtional #1), and an updated rendering of Florida Cracker #1. Check out the pickup truck in the driveway!

In related news, I decided to drop some bucks and upgrade the graphics board in my home computer to the eVGA GeForce 7950GT KO 512MB. Now the final renderings, instead of taking anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour, take at most about 6 minutes. And that's 6 minutes with 5+ lights casting shadows. The minimum time, such as for an outside shot (with just the good ol' sun casting shadows), is about 110 seconds, or just under 2 minutes. I can't say that having more lights casting shadows is better, but with such short rendering times, I can easily afford to experiment more. My next step will be to buy another flat panel display to go alongside the one I have, so I can render on one display while I do stuff on the other. Of course, I don't really have enough desk space for the second display, so I'll have to see what I can do about that. (Maybe relocate my laser printer. That will be simpler once I put it on the wireless print server I bought recently.)